And so it could be, in 2012, with the father and son of the libertarian cosmos: Ron and Rand Paul, the godfather of the tea party movement and one of its youngest, brightest stars.

Ron Paul is mulling another run for president after his surprisingly high-profile bid in 2008, when he broke the single-day online presidential fundraising record (then.-Sen. Barack Obama would later break it again) and called droves of libertarian voters out of the woodwork to build a national movement.

Rand Paul is considering a presidential campaign of his own, having gained star status in the tea party movement by shocking the GOP establishment with his primary, and then general election wins to gain Kentucky's open Senate seat in 2010.

Both appear to be more or less serious.

Ron Paul's political organization raised $1.1 million this spring and has used the money to send the Texas congressman to Iowa and New Hampshire, where he placed fifth in both GOP nominating contests in 2008. The elder Paul traveled to key primary states in the fall as well. Rand, newer to the presidential game, is reportedly testing the waters in South Carolina, the Charleston Post & Courier recently reported.

Will we see a father vs. son, Empire-Strikes-Back-esque libertarian lightsaber battle in the 2012 presidential race?

Unlikely. The young Jedi appears unwilling to run for president against his father.

"The only certain decision that Rand has made is that he will not run against his dad, and that any further thought would be put off until his dad makes a decision," said Jesse Benton, a political operative at the center of the Paul nexus. Benton ran communications for Ron Paul's 2008 presidential campaign and later managed Rand Paul's 2010 Senate campaign. He now serves as Ron's political director and as a paid adviser to Rand.

But while the two Pauls are both exploring their presidential possibilities, we may as well ask, as a thought exercise: If both ran, who would win? As long as a potential libertarian Gigantomachia is on the table, why not explore.

Before we jump to the more obvious conclusion--that Ron Paul, he of beloved national following, he of more seasoned wisdom--would reap more votes than his still-up-and-coming progeny, let's just keep one thing in mind: Rand Paul is already more powerful than his father, technically. He is a U.S. senator, one of 100. Ron Paul is a member of the House, one of 435. The denominators tell the tale. The son has already risen.

Some further points to consider, in weighing a potential outcome in the unthinkable Paul vs. Paul presidential feud:

Fundraising. Rand Paul raised $7.5 million in his 2010 Senate campaign and attracted significant interest from outside groups and a national tea-party donor base. Ron Paul raised $6 million in one day in 2007, breaking the all-time single-day online fundraising record for a presidential candidate, just a month and a half after he raised $4.3 million in one day. Advantage: Ron

Name recognition. Thanks to the '08 campaign, Ron Paul is widely known--in fact, 76 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents know who he is, according to recent Gallup figures. Rand Paul's GOP name recognition is probably better than that of the average Republican senator, given his widely publicized victory and ensuing controversy over the Civil Rights Act, and given that tea party groups raised money from a national activist base on his behalf. But I'm not aware of any polls that have gauged Rand's national name recognition, and it's probably safe to say he trails his father significantly. (Gallup shows Tim Pawlenty at only 39 percent recognition, after all.) Advantage: Ron

Campaign infrastructure. When you run for president, you make a lot of connections. Ron Paul would likely do better among key activists in key primary states, with whom he's already forged a connection. Rand, however, enjoyed significant backing last year from newly minted tea-party groups that didn't exist when his father ran in '08. Rand, not Ron, is their darling. It wouldn't make much sense for a national tea-party group to pick sides in a Paul vs. Paul showdown, so it's possible the national tea party activist infrastructure would sit on the sidelines, but it's also possible Rand could secure the backing of one or two significant groups. Advantage: Draw

Political liabilities. Rand Paul said he wouldn't have supported the part of the Civil Rights Act that forced private businesses to desegregate, which caused problems for him last summer. But Ron Paul has criticized the law, too. Both want to end foreign aid categorically, which can get dicey when people ask about Israel. The biggest difference could be this: As a presidential candidate, Ron Paul forcefully denounced the 2003 invasion of Iraq--while President Bush was president. Both oppose the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan on noninterventionist grounds, but Ron alienated some of President Bush's supporters with that stance. Thanks to timing, Rand didn't. Advantage: Rand

Debate potential. The early primary debates are all about making the most of one's stage time. With eight or 12 candidates sharing the spotlight, that doesn't leave much time for everyone. Ron and Rand hold basically the same positions, so it's likely they would receive the same amount of applause, from the same libertarians in the audiences. Key difference: Debate moderators would probably give Ron a little bit more time, since he's established himself as a key player in Republican politics, even if he's not a frontrunning presidential candidate. Advantage: Ron

Bottom line: Let's be serious. Ron wins this, hands down. Rand is banished. Order is maintained in the libertarian universe.

Thankfully for both Pauls, that won't happen, barring any unforeseen family squabbles between now and early 2012.

Then again, the campaign would be fun, so perhaps we should root for it. Maybe Rand borrows money from his father and never pays him back...maybe Ron tells his son too forcefully how to be a senator...maybe Rand responds snappily. High political entertainment would ensue.

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During residency, Iworked hospital shifts that could last 36 hours, without sleep, often without breaks of more than a few minutes. Even writing this now, it sounds to me like I’m bragging or laying claim to some fortitude of character. I can’t think of another type of self-injury that might be similarly lauded, except maybe binge drinking. Technically the shifts were 30 hours, the mandatory limit imposed by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education, but we stayed longer because people kept getting sick. Being a doctor is supposed to be about putting other people’s needs before your own. Our job was to power through.

The shifts usually felt shorter than they were, because they were so hectic. There was always a new patient in the emergency room who needed to be admitted, or a staff member on the eighth floor (which was full of late-stage terminally ill people) who needed me to fill out a death certificate. Sleep deprivation manifested as bouts of anger and despair mixed in with some euphoria, along with other sensations I’ve not had before or since. I remember once sitting with the family of a patient in critical condition, discussing an advance directive—the terms defining what the patient would want done were his heart to stop, which seemed likely to happen at any minute. Would he want to have chest compressions, electrical shocks, a breathing tube? In the middle of this, I had to look straight down at the chart in my lap, because I was laughing. This was the least funny scenario possible. I was experiencing a physical reaction unrelated to anything I knew to be happening in my mind. There is a type of seizure, called a gelastic seizure, during which the seizing person appears to be laughing—but I don’t think that was it. I think it was plain old delirium. It was mortifying, though no one seemed to notice.

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In 2008, Nebraska decriminalized child abandonment. The move was part of a "safe haven" law designed to address increased rates of infanticide in the state. Like other safe-haven laws, parents in Nebraska who felt unprepared to care for their babies could drop them off in a designated location without fear of arrest and prosecution. But legislators made a major logistical error: They failed to implement an age limitation for dropped-off children.

Within just weeks of the law passing, parents started dropping off their kids. But here's the rub: None of them were infants. A couple of months in, 36 children had been left in state hospitals and police stations. Twenty-two of the children were over 13 years old. A 51-year-old grandmother dropped off a 12-year-old boy. One father dropped off his entire family -- nine children from ages one to 17. Others drove from neighboring states to drop off their children once they heard that they could abandon them without repercussion.

His paranoid style paved the road for Trumpism. Now he fears what’s been unleashed.

Glenn Beck looks like the dad in a Disney movie. He’s earnest, geeky, pink, and slightly bulbous. His idea of salty language is bullcrap.

The atmosphere at Beck’s Mercury Studios, outside Dallas, is similarly soothing, provided you ignore the references to genocide and civilizational collapse. In October, when most commentators considered a Donald Trump presidency a remote possibility, I followed audience members onto the set of The Glenn Beck Program, which airs on Beck’s website, theblaze.com. On the way, we passed through a life-size replica of the Oval Office as it might look if inhabited by a President Beck, complete with a portrait of Ronald Reagan and a large Norman Rockwell print of a Boy Scout.

Since the end of World War II, the most crucial underpinning of freedom in the world has been the vigor of the advanced liberal democracies and the alliances that bound them together. Through the Cold War, the key multilateral anchors were NATO, the expanding European Union, and the U.S.-Japan security alliance. With the end of the Cold War and the expansion of NATO and the EU to virtually all of Central and Eastern Europe, liberal democracy seemed ascendant and secure as never before in history.

Under the shrewd and relentless assault of a resurgent Russian authoritarian state, all of this has come under strain with a speed and scope that few in the West have fully comprehended, and that puts the future of liberal democracy in the world squarely where Vladimir Putin wants it: in doubt and on the defensive.

The same part of the brain that allows us to step into the shoes of others also helps us restrain ourselves.

You’ve likely seen the video before: a stream of kids, confronted with a single, alluring marshmallow. If they can resist eating it for 15 minutes, they’ll get two. Some do. Others cave almost immediately.

This “Marshmallow Test,” first conducted in the 1960s, perfectly illustrates the ongoing war between impulsivity and self-control. The kids have to tamp down their immediate desires and focus on long-term goals—an ability that correlates with their later health, wealth, and academic success, and that is supposedly controlled by the front part of the brain. But a new study by Alexander Soutschek at the University of Zurich suggests that self-control is also influenced by another brain region—and one that casts this ability in a different light.

Modern slot machines develop an unbreakable hold on many players—some of whom wind up losing their jobs, their families, and even, as in the case of Scott Stevens, their lives.

On the morning of Monday, August 13, 2012, Scott Stevens loaded a brown hunting bag into his Jeep Grand Cherokee, then went to the master bedroom, where he hugged Stacy, his wife of 23 years. “I love you,” he told her.

Stacy thought that her husband was off to a job interview followed by an appointment with his therapist. Instead, he drove the 22 miles from their home in Steubenville, Ohio, to the Mountaineer Casino, just outside New Cumberland, West Virginia. He used the casino ATM to check his bank-account balance: $13,400. He walked across the casino floor to his favorite slot machine in the high-limit area: Triple Stars, a three-reel game that cost $10 a spin. Maybe this time it would pay out enough to save him.

“Well, you’re just special. You’re American,” remarked my colleague, smirking from across the coffee table. My other Finnish coworkers, from the school in Helsinki where I teach, nodded in agreement. They had just finished critiquing one of my habits, and they could see that I was on the defensive.

I threw my hands up and snapped, “You’re accusing me of being too friendly? Is that really such a bad thing?”

“Well, when I greet a colleague, I keep track,” she retorted, “so I don’t greet them again during the day!” Another chimed in, “That’s the same for me, too!”

Unbelievable, I thought. According to them, I’m too generous with my hellos.

When I told them I would do my best to greet them just once every day, they told me not to change my ways. They said they understood me. But the thing is, now that I’ve viewed myself from their perspective, I’m not sure I want to remain the same. Change isn’t a bad thing. And since moving to Finland two years ago, I’ve kicked a few bad American habits.

A professor of cognitive science argues that the world is nothing like the one we experience through our senses.

As we go about our daily lives, we tend to assume that our perceptions—sights, sounds, textures, tastes—are an accurate portrayal of the real world. Sure, when we stop and think about it—or when we find ourselves fooled by a perceptual illusion—we realize with a jolt that what we perceive is never the world directly, but rather our brain’s best guess at what that world is like, a kind of internal simulation of an external reality. Still, we bank on the fact that our simulation is a reasonably decent one. If it wasn’t, wouldn’t evolution have weeded us out by now? The true reality might be forever beyond our reach, but surely our senses give us at least an inkling of what it’s really like.

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President Obama asked intelligence officials to perform a “full review” of election-related hacking this week, and plans will share a report of its findings with lawmakers before he leaves office on January 20, 2017.

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Democrats who have struggled for years to sell the public on the Affordable Care Act are now confronting a far more urgent task: mobilizing a political coalition to save it.

Even as the party reels from last month’s election defeat, members of Congress, operatives, and liberal allies have turned to plotting a campaign against repealing the law that, they hope, will rival the Tea Party uprising of 2009 that nearly scuttled its passage in the first place. A group of progressive advocacy groups will announce on Friday a coordinated effort to protect the beneficiaries of the Affordable Care Act and stop Republicans from repealing the law without first identifying a plan to replace it.

They don’t have much time to fight back. Republicans on Capitol Hill plan to set repeal of Obamacare in motion as soon as the new Congress opens in January, and both the House and Senate could vote to wind down the law immediately after President-elect Donald Trump takes the oath of office on the 20th.